The Executioners: Excerpts from A Short History of a New World  by Lucas Chib

The Executioners: Excerpts from A Short History of a New World 

by Lucas Chib

1.   I recently acquired a new hobby; purging the dictionary of words like love, happiness, serenity, laughter, joy, contentedness, jubilation, compassion, tolerance, peace and the like. In a world that swings between a horror movie and a nightmare, there is no need to walk around with illusions. So I went through the dictionary from beginning to end, like I had so many times before, read all words to confirm the meanings of those I already knew and see if they needed updating to fit in with how times had changed. Different eras render meanings of some words archaic. New meanings to existing words are acquired in the streets where new words also originate. I learned their new etymologies, new theories attached to them, and when I finished, I went back to the beginning and started getting rid of words that had become irrelevant. 
2. We lost the vocabulary a long time ago, after the tyranny of profit was done erasing consciousness from our minds. We became minions competing to see who among us was brutal beyond measure, who had the most annihilative idea, the most brutal invention that would bring about profits while at the same time fulfilling our need for personal gratification through bloodshed, which had become the only way people could improve their lot in life, a chance to leave behind poverty, change our lives, move up the ladder, become famous. But the instant fame and wealth was elusive. Fame, if one achieved it, only lasted seconds.
3. Executions became conversation starters, a favorite pastime, talked about at bars, restaurants, social gatherings, and at water coolers in the same way people once talked about basketball, football, soccer, tennis, hockey, baseball, cricket; games that were now becoming extinct. They were how children and parents bonded. At night, when the children were put to bed, parents read them stories of executions, then kissed them goodnight. 
4. At first, we practiced with games we were sold. The idea of shooting down someone inside screens that harbored enemies we could destroy without seeing, how marvelous an invention. And when the games ceased to excite, something inside us demanded real life executions the way our bodies need air and water. Some said brutality was the supreme spiritual hunger of the soul demanding to be nourished and we would live in anguish until we satisfied its demands. There was never resistance to the idea. It was a question of targets to start with.
5. Standing apart from the crowd and distinguishing yourself as a thinker opposed to non-thinking was bound to get one noticed. Uncertainty reigned. It was an age of fear. People were wary of each other. They betrayed each other to live a day longer. Everything became treasonous. Sneezing at the wrong time, and there was no defining what the wrong time was. Laughing, crying, coughing, getting the flu, being poor, rich, well read, poorly read, talkative, quiet, friendly, unfriendly, boring, charming, dull, kind, unkind… 
6. We had reached the peak of our civilization; a haven of soul-corroding boredom, a desert of ennui we watered with oases of horrors that comprise an endless ocean where trees of our basest natures flourished. The world swung from a horror movie to a nightmare. Nothing was ushered in gently. To sustain the engine that runs the world we built the most bloodletting inventions. 
7. Civilization is just a word that corresponds to the look of a particular era in the unchanging stage that is time. The look of an era is the illusion of progress that technology seems to foster. Technological progress is a given, it is nothing to shout about from the rooftops. It is the natural path human existence moves towards in trying make life in a planet where nature is harsh, indifferent and unpredictable, more livable and predictable. Only the evolution of the heart from primal brutality towards compassion and practicing compassion towards others signifies true civilization. Technological progress as the marker of civility will always fall short. 

24. We finally told our executioners, those tasked with pacifying us, “This is our world”, and we took it back. The flames of goodness they had tried to light were replaced by storms of rage that rumbled inside us. Why do we need to hide our base nature? Why do we need to hide what we do best? Why do one thing and say another? Why not kill each other out in the open so everyone can see this is the way we are. It is our natural human state. We were exercising our animal instinct. We acknowledged our vile hearts and embraced them. We did away with our own hypocrisy. We liberated ourselves from deadening confines of piousness. From then on, every day was an apocalypse with no exits. We celebrated! This had always been the most natural path of human existence through different eras, that is if nature, through its most reliable aspect, unpredictability, didn’t exercise its cleansing hand by deploying natural disasters or disease.
25. But I was talking about my new hobby, taking words time has rendered obsolete and deleting them from the dictionary. Words that have been made obsolete by banality of chaos. Chaos, the order of things, where everything begins and ends. Words like love, happiness, serenity, laughter, joy, compassion, peace, humanism and the like. Why have them when they no longer truly exist?